The voice is almost as familiar as the face now. It rings clearly throughout the studios in RTE as he dips into the various caverns of his past as guided by Pat Kenny. A bright, sonorous Scots accent, a Saturday television voice. They flip subjects seamlessly and it makes for polished listening. A bit of banter about golf and then he's off air and exiting the studio; Alan Hansen, Liverpool star or TV pundit. All depends on your age.

"When I was playing with Liverpool, I could walk anywhere in London and no-one would have a clue who I was. But now, you walk down the street and it's, "och, shocking defending" or "you cannae win anything with kids" or whatever. I don't mind it, it's funny but usually they try to do the Scots accent and are just awful at it."

Since reinventing himself as a TV pundit - favouring the same languid and seemingly effortless style as won him plaudits as a player - Hansen has come across as a very sure, faintly sardonic reviewer of current players fortunes; the acidly humorous Scot and perfect foil to Gary Lineker's homespun Englishness. You watch Hansen make his point, hands all a-flurry, gaze earnest and voice steady and it's as if self-doubt never even occurred to him.

"If only people knew. I still can't bring myself to watch a recording of any of the shows. If I ever did, I think I'd just quit. I lacked confidence when I was a kid and have always suffered terribly from nerves. Every game with Liverpool, even in my later seasons, gave me the jitters. From 2.15 until five to three, I was shaking. Even now when I'm driving to the studios and I see the QPR fans flowing down the road to the ground, I get butterflies."

He always held views, right from his early days in Sauchie but felt it wiser not to air them. When he moved from Partick Thistle to Liverpool in 1977, he was a gangly smalltown Scots lad unsure if he belonged at such a club. It's reputation left him in trembling awe and one of the most enjoyable passages in his new autobiography refers to one of his first meetings with Bob Paisley. Hansen sat in the back of a car while it was conveyed to Paisley - in the front - that the new signing was an avid golf fan.

"Oh, we don't approve of golf at Liverpool," dismissed the manager and that was that. Technically gifted but physically raw, Hansen was a most untypical centre back for English football in the late Seventies and Eighties.

In retrospect, it is impossible to imagine him not there; on those May days when Liverpool almost habitually lifted silverware, it seemed the Scotsman was always there, poised and smiling if slightly detached. In a generally dark time for the English game, he was central to a team that blazed a lone trail and prided itself on a schooling its players on the legend of the boot-room.

"It was special to Liverpool that, just a small room. Lads would have drinks in there after games but you needed to be established to go in. I wouldn't have dreamt of walking in through it in my early years.

But it was more myth than anything, what it represented."

He says he is devoid of nostalgia when if comes to football.

Doesn't miss the rush of the crowd, the adrenalin and doesn't really think about the glory days very much at all.

"The players from that time bump into one another now and again. I saw John Barnes for the first time in four years yesterday. And nothing changes you know, you just pick up. But it was never the Liverpool way to look back. Yeah, I love the club - there'd be something wrong if I didn't after 14 years. But it didn't leave a void or anything."

Even the dark days of Hillsborough and Heysel trouble him only when presented to him nowadays, as they inevitably are during talk shows.

"What happened at Heysel was terrible, a catastrophe from the beginning. I mean, the game didn't matter to us after what happened but because we left the next day, as a team we were more removed from it. Hillsborough went on for weeks and the thing about that was, the players were supposed to be councillors in the aftermath. What do you do when an old man asks you why his seventeen-year-old grandson is taken away? I felt helpless. And a woman kept her son on life support just long enough for the team to visit. Then the lad was pronounced dead. I lost it then. There was a time when you would think about it every day. But time is a healer, except for those who lost somebody. It's impossible to describe what they continue to go through."

Hillsborough occurred even as English football was about to shed itself off the old ways in favour of a shiny, money driven mood of enlightenment. Hansen quietly stepped away from the game just as corporate football was cranking up. Now, he talks about the game as a product, a business. No room for sentiment. He fell into the punditry game, took to it with poise and now it's what he does. TV, golf, occasional visits to Sauchie.

"It's a tiny mining village but it's changed. Used to be a thriving little place. I left in 1977 and remember going back one day in 1984. Friday afternoon at about half past two. There wasn't one person on the street. But I still love the place, I had 22 years there and my friends are still there. I'm still from Sauchie. The kids are English, though. Or so they keep telling me. What can you do?"

A Matter of Opinion by Alan Hansen, published by Partridge, is now available in hardback at £16.99